The style of Hearts I first learned had some different rules which I feel would make a worthy expansion to the Omnibus version. I feel that having more possibilities to have the score both rise and fall makes for a more interesting experience.

1. If a person takes no tricks in a hand, they get 5 points taken off their score.2. If a person shoots the moon, they have the choice of either receiving 26 points off their own score, or adding 26 to each of their opponents' scores.3. Modify the game so that there is an option in the general set-up: when the Queen of Spades is played, it "breaks" the Hearts as well. This can be set or not, according to the player's wishes.4. Modify the game so that the maximum score for a game can be set by the user. I learned Hearts where the max. score (and therefore, the end of the game) was 55, but having the ability to set any number the player wishes will make the game more versatile.5. This one's personal: I find that the card sorting animation that occurs after the initial deal and then again following the card exchange to be distracting, and frankly, headache inducing. Please consider an option whereby this display is bypassed, and the cards simply appear in sorted order.

More importantly there should be a way to blackball players when they quit a game early. There should be an option for any opponents to give this person a blackball to prevent them from pulling out of a game, because they are getting beat. This tally should then be tracked next to their username in the Network section. It would also be nice to have some sort of ranking depending on how you do in games. This would give other players an idea of each others ability.

Coming from another version of Hearts (3D Hearts, from Freesoft, which no longer works on my Intel machine running Lion), I miss several features. To wit:

• It would be helpful to have more detailed stats available during the game, such as which players have taken what points during each trick; and after each hand, such as interim scores for each previous hand, not just points per hand and the aggregate total. • And what’s the possibility of keeping a record of running scores between games, with at least average scores for the current player?

And two observations:

• The graphics, customization, and game play are quite lovely and show wonderful attention to detail; thanks! • And, unless I’ve missed something, the only difference between the free version of the game and the paid version is that there are ads in the free version. Frankly, those ads are not particularly annoying (and I’m easily annoyed by ads!), so the only reason to buy the paid version is to show appreciation for a well-made app. That’s very nice of the developer, but it may give his users a little too much credit — I hope I’m wrong about that.